“Tell me about the creature. The one they buried beneath those flowers.” the newcomer says, placing his coat on the bench as he takes a seat beside the old man.

“No creature,”the old man replies. “A girl. Of flesh and bone, just like our own.”

The old man shifts in his seat, leaning back before continuing,

“Birthed with a giving heart, she was plagued with compassion.

  Raised with a curious spirit, she was cursed to ambition.

 Gifted with a mind that could make sense of it all, she was left with eyes that would never know light.” 

“She was blind?” the newcomer asks. 

“But all seeing,” the old man replies

“Why bury her beneath that tree?” the newcomer then asks. 

The old man pauses for a moment, his gaze on the setting horizon growing distant. As if he was no longer looking at the orange line before him, but rather at something buried deep within his memories, from a time long since past.

“They say her giving heart was like food for the hungry.” the old man finally says “They came, they took, and took, and took.

 They say her curious spirit were like wings that never spread. They shed, and withered, and withered, and withered.

 They say her gifted mind drove her from those around her. A bleeding gap that would only widen, and widen.

 They say her all seeing eyes, while blind, were too innocent. They corrupted, with sins, until horns through them grew.

 The sins of the selfish, of the greedy and the damned. 

 They say when she fell into her slumber eternal, her soul, once pure, departed this world tainted and hollow.

 She etched her name into that very tree beneath which flowers of redemption now grow.

 Hoping she would one day be returned the innocence we stole.

L.I.L.Y

She had carved. With the roman numeral ‘one’. 

 To represent the only thing she was ever made to feel for her unconditional love.” 

 As the old man finished, drifting off into silence, the newcomer shifts his gaze to the tree, looming over a group of stargazer lilies,

“L-one-l-y.” the newcomer whispered.